Posted
|
Blog Archives

Atlantic herring are vital to coastal ecosystems on the East Coast as prey for a wide variety of marine wildlife. This September, the New England Fishery Management Council will decide how to protect herring in coastal waters from intensive industrial fishing, and how to change the way catch limits are calculated for this critical fish. The Council should vote to protect waters out to 50 miles from shore, and set catch limits that reflect herring’s value to the ecosystem. … More Info »

Around the country, fishery managers have begun a transition to ecosystem-based fisheries management, which considers how fishing for individual species affects the wider ecosystem, and how such factors as ocean conditions, and the presence or absence of predators, affect the number of fish that can be caught sustainably. The New England Fishery Management Council is using this modern, realistic approach as it reconsiders how it sets catch limits for Atlantic herring. … More Info »

At its Aug. 3 meeting, the Menhaden Management Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) will decide how much menhaden fishermen will be allowed to catch along the East Coast in 2017. If managers increase the catch limit, hundreds of millions more menhaden—often called “the most important fish in the sea” because of their role as food for predators—will be removed from the Atlantic Ocean. Here are 10 reasons the board should not raise the existing catch limit on these forage fish. … More Info »

Herring are also one of the most heavily fished species in U.S. Atlantic waters. Much of this fishing is done by industrial-sized ships known as midwater trawlers. The huge scale of fishing effort has created a challenge for the fisheries managers working to ensure that the herring population remains healthy enough to support fishing over the long term and that enough herring are available to feed the many animals that depend on them. … More Info »

Seagrass provides food and shelter for thousands of species. But these flora are dying in vast tracts across the globe. Congress has an opportunity to improve protections for all marine habitats when it reauthorizes the primary law that governs U.S. ocean fishing, the Magnuson-Stevens Act. … More Info »

In 2012 and 2013, sea temperatures along the New England coast spiked, shattering records that stretch back a century and a half. As the waters warmed, fishermen hauled in some unexpected catch, including species that are normally found far to the south. Although some of these unusual catches are likely just one-off events, scientists have found that many of these incidents indicate a larger and important trend of fish species moving as climate change heats our oceans. … More Info »

Perched aboard the International Space Station some 240 miles above the Earth, an astronaut trained a camera last July on one of the U.S. Atlantic Coast’s most instantly recognizable features: the hooked tip of Cape Cod. NASA included the picture in a list of the top 15 space station images of 2015, thanks to the striking patterns of swirling sands and what the image tells us about a landscape molded by constant change. It’s a lovely view of the place I call home, and I think it serves as a reminder of how useful it is to get a big picture on things in order to appreciate and properly respond to the changes that affect us here. … More Info »

This latest piece in the Pew Charitable Trust series on the Magnuson-Stevens Act 40th anniversary features Maine fisherman and MacArthur “Genius” Ted Ames. His work to better understand the ecological history of cod shows a potential path to a recovery for the fishery by better managing the forage fish they depended on in the past. … More Info »